


no problem that can’t be lit on fire

by kiiouex



Series: Rovinsky Week 2018 [1]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Established Relationship, Explosives, M/M, Monsters, Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 12:59:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14309157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: He must have surfaced a dozen times, and every single time, something came back with him, as loose and half-formed as all his fever-bright thoughts.





	no problem that can’t be lit on fire

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 prompt is dreams/nightmares, fever dreams are sort of both ;) 
> 
> Thanks to [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta reading and for [Rovinsky week](https://rovinskyweek.tumblr.com/) for putting it together ❤

It is a warm, sticky, restless sort of a night, and Ronan dreams badly.

When he surfaces inside sleep, it’s not a true, lucid dream like he’s used to, but a blur of sensation, the logic of the world sliding around him and only holding still when he pins it by looking. Ronan explores a shadow of the Barns, one that’s hooded and haunted and half Monmouth around the windows. He’s not sure what he’s after, exactly, but he thinks he might be trying to bring some new miracle back into the waking world, and his mind struggles to dredge up both a problem and a physical solution he can holds in his hands.

What he gets is a dream-object, even in the dream, a strong sensation that he’s holding something marvellous though it’s shapeless and totally intangible. Even as Ronan tries to remember the trick for making things real, to hold them and feel their imprint in his hand, the thing morphs and shifts between his fingers, becoming whatever he half-thinks it might be for only the second he thinks it. There's no imprint to make, no shape to fix in his mind, and he's not in the forest anyway so maybe the dream was doomed from the start.

He knows before he wakes up that he's not bringing anything back, and when the dream dissolves around him, he lets it. He opens his eyes to the ceiling of Monmouth, too-warm and aching, empty handed.

Except. There is a sound from the foot of the bed, half-chitter, half-cough, and something the size of a rat crawls over his foot. Sleep paralysis holds Ronan still, keeps his tongue trapped behind his teeth while the thing moves _up_ along his leg. The only thing to be thankful for is that it’s over the sheet, not under it; when it comes into view, Ronan’s jaw tics with a curse he can’t make aloud.

The dream thing he has brought out is simply _weird_. It’s like a rat ate a jewellery box, velvet and flashy and shuffling around on six stumpy legs. The place where the face would be is gluey and melted, which doesn’t seem to bother the creature in the least. It makes an ugly little hacking sound, showing every one of its soupy organs when it opens its mouth and spitting up a dark purple glob of _something_ onto Ronan’s bare arm.

“K,” Ronan says, recovering movement and pushing as far away from the little horror as he can. He has to shove Kavinsky to get a response, “K, look at this fucking thing.”

Kavinsky rolls over slowly, unimpressed with being woken and with the tiny monster that Ronan created. “You make some messed up stuff, Lynch,” he says, scraping a hand over his eyes. “Can’t stick to TVs like the rest of us, you’ve got to make your own rodents. Can’t pawn _that_ off. Or, maybe you could?”

“I’m not going to sell it,” Ronan says with disgust. “We need to get rid of it.”

Kavinsky gives Ronan a look that says he’s not getting out of bed for this. He looks more than comfortable in Ronan’s bed, covers falling off him, every piece of clothing in a pile on the floor. He regards the gilded rodent with bored eyes, and asks, “Aren’t you a farmer? Take it outside and smash it with a brick.”

Ronan says, “Aren’t you so fucking helpful,” flips him off, and takes it outside to smash it with a brick.

The thing wiggles hideously in his hands, like half its surface is chain and snatching at his skin. Up close, Ronan doesn’t know what to make of it, except that he doesn’t want to have it up close anymore; it spits up another purple, organ-like thing on Monmouth’s steps as he carries it outside, then gurgles and writhes in Ronan’s grip. He is not at all sorry to be putting this thing out of its misery, and he finds a corner of the concrete, a hefty brick, and tries to hold it still against the ground as he swings.

The thing _pops_ at the impact, spattering violet murk over Ronan’s arms and making him retch at the odour. There is nothing left beneath the brick but a blackberry stain and the stink of rot, and Ronan pushes himself away from it, gagging.

There’s something wrong with Cabeswater, or there’s something not right in his own head, if he’s dreaming up shit like that. Maybe it’s his unholy union with Kavinsky, but Ronan can’t figure out what would go so badly sour to make him conjure that little beast. It’s not like his night-horrors that shredded him in his subconscious; he hadn’t been dreaming about stinking malformed rats.

He spends ten minutes scrubbing up before he goes back to bed. Kavinsky’s asleep again already, curled away from Ronan, his shoulder blades sharp warnings against getting too close. Ronan stares at his back for a long minute, resisting the urge to kick him for being an unhelpful shit, resisting the urge to press up again K’s chest and feel that frenetic hammer.

It’s too hot to lie together, is what Ronan decides eventually, settling back down. K must be running cold or something to be huddled under the covers; Ronan kicks off the sheet, even though it’s good protection against things that ooze, and falls back into an uncomfortable sleep.

 

The only reason he gets up in the morning is to see Kavinsky out. Gansey’s in DC for the week, which means Kavinsky can come to Monmouth without a whole lot of barbed and boring small talk. Gansey’s opinions on Kavinsky are plain; Kavinsky is liable to retaliate on all his unprotected possessions. Hence, Ronan shuffling him out the door.

“Check it out if you want, it’s the back corner of the lot, though it _reeks_ ,” he says, hopeful that Kavinsky might actually do what he wants, and tell him what he’s dealing with. Ronan still feels tired from the night before, and he doesn’t _think_ it’s because of the rat’s vapours, but his muscles don’t seem hugely interested in supporting him anymore.

“I know you’re in Dick-Three’s little archaeology club, but I am not interested in dead things,” Kavinsky says, shades back on, voice a drawl, _probably_ better for a real night’s sleep, though there’s no telling with him. He’s taken one of Ronan’s leather jackets, and Ronan is very stuck between demanding it back and the sight of it draped over K’s skinny frame. Fuck, he’ll get it back later, if he talks to Kavinsky any longer he’ll see that he’s holding the door for support. “I’ll see you tonight?”

“See you tonight,” Ronan replies, and closes the door on the landing with relief.

He’s narrowed the world down to two possibilities: the tiny nightmare was as toxic as it looked or, and the headache swimming in the back of his skull makes this more likely, he’s just stupidly, mundanely sick.

And with no Gansey to look after him, Ronan thinks with no humour, trudging back into his bedroom to collapse back on the mattress. More sleep will fix him.

 

He spends the day drifting in and out of sleep, flashes of lucidity that feel more like a dream than the waking world. Bits and pieces of everywhere he knows blur together, Cabeswater’s forest becoming the Barn’s orchard becoming Aglionby’s grounds.

There’s a _chitter_ right in his ear, there’s a smell like burning, then he’s back in the woods with clean air and rain. Something paws at his face, and he turns and it’s a tree branch, but back the other way and it’s an eyeless owl with a body made of mud.

He gets glimpses of his room, of the window and the sky churning beyond, before he rolls back into sleep. Sweaty sheets tangle around his legs and his ankles, along with claws and hooks and slithering vines. Time is lost to heat and the vice gripping in his skull.

When he surfaces, it’s almost dark, the last vestiges of dusk slowly slipping away across the floorboards. Ronan’s throat is parched, and his headache is still very present, but it’s duller. He feels better, in a scoured-clean sort of way that’s not totally comfortable. A big drink of water and some food are going to go a very long way.

And then he hears that _chitter_. Still immobile, Ronan lies on his back, feeling something on his chest, something wrapped around one leg. Claws that were thorns in his dream knead his skin and sink into place; there’s a rattle of something hard on the floor beneath his bed. Beneath his head.

Slowly, movement returning, Ronan pushes himself up in careful inches, to see the grotesque menagerie cluttering his room. One creature, little more than a canvas orb with a gaping, toothy mouth, billows bright orange smoke. Another built like a steel water strider kicks its legs out in jarring, abrupt bursts of motion that unerringly pull it in Ronan’s direction. Something at its heart pulses.

He must have surfaced a dozen times, and every single time, something came back with him, as loose and half-formed as all his fever-bright thoughts.

A rat, Ronan can smash with a brick. These look like he might detonate if he tries the same trick, or burrow clean through his hand when he goes to grab them. They’re nothing like the night horrors, which for all their size and teeth, had been creatures he’d _known_. These are fever-dreams, as miserable and erratic as his brain.

Trying not to move too quickly and draw attention, Ronan reaches under the bed, to where he abandoned his phone the night before. There’s a string of mixed texts from Kavinsky since he was unresponsive all day, the most recent ones trending into real concern. He skips through them and dials. It takes K a long time to answer, time that Ronan spends watching a rotten and anatomically incorrect spider drag itself under the bed. Something in the room is ticking, and Ronan thinks the sound may be getting faster.

“K,” Ronan says as soon as he gets an answer, “K, fuck you, get over to Monmouth now.”

“I’ve been texting you all fucking day and now _you’re_ in a rush?” Kavinsky says, and Ronan thanks God that he sounds both amicable and sober.

“There’s more of the – things,” Ronan says, as the spider climbs up a bedpost and loses a leg in the process. “There’s a fucking _lot_ of the things.”  

Clearly pleased to have been called, Kavinsky asks, “And you need help?”

The orange smoke gathered against his ceiling is beginning to sink lower. Ronan thinks he can smell paint thinner. “I thought you might have some experience that I could use.”

“Alright, princess, I’ll be there soon.”

“Don’t go to any fucking trouble,” Ronan spits, as a model car on the floor begins to wrinkle and age. Every single thing in the room is noxious, bulging, gasping, heaving, and it is only after tip-toeing to the window to check it’s locked that he dares to leave them alone.

The world is better on the other side of his bedroom door. Ronan has to rifle through the dirty laundry in the kitchen to find clothes less sweaty than the ones he’s wearing, and then chugs half a carton of juice before regretting it. He’s feeling sick in a very different way to that morning; having the absolute garbage his brain dredged up on the loose in his room has him on edge. _Something_ is going to evolve to work a lock, or slither out under the door, or simply detonate and take half of Monmouth with it. That’ll be a surprise for Gansey; the Camaro untouched this time, Ronan went for the house.

At least Kavinsky doesn’t take long. The Evo’s vibration is the most welcome thing as Ronan sprints to the stairs, slipping over the organ last night’s monster left behind. “Jesus Lynch, too eager,” Kavinsky tells him, sliding out of the car, Ronan’s leather jacket still on his shoulders though the shirt underneath has gotten lost along the way. “Are you really _that scared_ of a couple of things you put under your own bed? Where are your fucking balls, man?”

Ronan shows him his bedroom. Once the initial billow of smoke has cleared away, once K’s view of the chittering, gibbering, putrid mess clears up, Ronan feels vindicated. Something has vomited a pile of bones onto his laundry. Something else is sobbing, and stinking of spoiled milk, an acrid tang that Ronan does not even _care_ he’s going to clean up, because at least he can see the desiccated spider reflected in Kavinsky’s shades and Kavinsky can’t say fucking anything.

They close the door. Kavinsky thinks, and Ronan rubs a hand over his nose, like that paint thinner reek is going to go anywhere any time soon, and just barely resists to say something taunting that will make Kavinsky unhelpful.

“Alright,” K says, “You made a freak show. Let me get some shit from my car.”

“You’ve dealt with this stuff before?”

“ _Fuck_ no Lynch, your head is a _mess_ if you’re coming up with shit like this.” Kavinsky starts for the stairs, only knocking his shades down so Ronan can see the incredulity on his face. “I don’t know what your fucking id is saying it’s hot for, but you’ve got to stop listening.”   

Ronan follows, snapping, “They’re fever dreams, asshole.”

“Well, don’t get attached.”

The boot of Kavinsky’s car meets Ronan’s lowest expectations. “Of course you’ve got sacks,” Ronan mutters. “Are those your only gloves? They’re not thick enough, you saw the fucking teeth on that condor.” He might have wanted to keep the bird, too, if it had any sort of face beyond the fangs, and if it didn’t ooze.

Kavinsky shakes the sack out and gives Ronan his most extremely patient, tired look. “Do you and Dick Three have any better gloves in the residence?”

It turns out they do, left over from Monmouth’s first era. It’s a real debate, who has to actually _wear_ them, one Ronan loses on the grounds that he made the stupid things in the first place. He calls Kavinsky five kinds of coward on the way back upstairs, but really, he’s very happy not to be doing this alone.

Kavinsky holds the sack; Ronan ties a t-shirt over his nose and mouth, and wades back in. The fever dreams are unpleasant things to grab, the slush of the brain that made them never more apparent than when Ronan tries to get a firm grip on them. Every one seems to have a unique and disgusting surprise, pustules that burst onto the glove, segmented bodies that let them flip right around to latch their teeth on him, and the ones that rot require cupped hands so that he doesn’t leave too much of them on the floor.

He drags them out thrashing, then checks below the bed, drags his wardrobe out from the wall, kicks the laundry over to make sure nothing scuttles past. He doesn’t know how _many_ there are, just that he doesn’t want to find out he missed one when it crawls over his face in the middle of the night.

“You’re going to want to torch this place, Lynch,” Kavinsky tells him gravely when he’s done. “Febreeze isn’t going to fix this mess.”

“You sleep here too, asshole,” Ronan says, tearing his rough mask off and reeling as the remainder of the stink hits him full force. “You mix up some fucking chemical magic and help out.”

Kavinsky laughs, which is unhelpful, and then cinches the sack shut tight. The bag is heavy black canvas, and while Ronan doesn’t doubt that the contents can chew his way free, he hopes they’ve got a little time before they do.

He sits in the back of the car with the sack of monsters, so at least they won’t be surprised if anything gets loose, while Kavinsky speeds them along to wherever he disposes of bodies. Ronan is sure that he has a place. Downright negligent as he doesn’t. Every time the sack wriggles, he feels his chest get that little bit tighter, and has to resist the urge to kick the back and show them where to bite. Stupid goddamned Greywaren can’t even keep his hallucinations in check; he is very badly looking forwards to burying the lot of them, or smashing them with a very big brick, whatever K’s got in mind.

They pull up to an abandoned lot, the kind with scorch marks on the concrete, potholes with black around the edges that Ronan does not think is natural wear and tear. The only building in sight is a warehouse with rusted panelling a quarter mile away; the concrete stretches out around them, wide enough that no escaped fever should be able to just disappear.

Wrangling the sack is a joint job, it’s heavy and angry enough. Kavinsky leads again, dragging it to the largest of all the lot’s potholes, one half the size of a car and deep enough to swallow the bag. Ronan stands guard while K fetches something else from his car; a round, cartoony black bomb, looking 3D printed and solidly plastic. Ronan does not doubt for a second that it works.

They are going to make a fucking _mess_.

“You’re going to want to stand back,” K warns, setting a match to a comically fat fuse.

 _Is this safe?_ Ronan thinks, and does not say out loud. There is a curl of orange smoke leaking from the bag’s top. From the slurping, chewing sort of sound that’s escaped, he knows something is chewing it’s way free, and if they spend any time debating the pros and cons of explosives they’re going to be taking pot shots at a small sea of deformed nightmares.  

They retreat together, all the way back to the Evo, Ronan not trusting that fuse and his shoulders up _hard_ waiting for the rush of hot air to lash him in the back. Kavinsky being unhurried did _not_ promise that they were not about to get caught in the blast. But he can’t not watch, and once they’ve turned, Kavinsky slings an arm over Ronan’s shoulder, ready for the show.

Every single thing in the sack seems to detonate separately. Fluorescent viscera soars up above the ball of tangerine smoke, while a set of amber teeth pop like firecrackers and Kavinsky whoops with sheer delight. A dozen little explosions chain on after the bomb, all of them adding something unholy to the cloud, until the smoke is murky brown and the ground is soupy with prismatic ooze.

Ronan feels just a little bit nauseous. He could not think of a more fitting end to all his half-baked little monsters than this. He sits on his haunches to watch the smoke clear, inhaling a chemical tang that is almost one-hundred percent likely to be poisonous, watching the last fragments of porcelain femur crash into the ground.

“You’re really something else, you know that?” Kavinsky says, sounding definitively fond.

“Thanks,” Ronan mutters, exhausted and thirsty and in need of a real deep sleep. “I’m staying at your place tonight, my room fucking reeks.”

Kavinsky looks at him over his shades, mouth dour. “After what you did to your place?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you want to talk to me you can find me on [tungle](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I'd _really like_ to do the rest of Rovinsky week but so far I've got seven WIPs and a short attention span. Giving it a fair shot though :^)


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